It certainly wasn't a picture-perfect weekend for the baseball team. But the Blue Devils (4-3) shook off a pair off loses to hand the Cincinnati Bearcats a 9-8 loss in extra innings to move their record back above .500.
"I think it was a huge win," coach Bill Hillier said. "We've always done a very good job of rebounding. Now we're coming out of Sunday with a win, and the players have tomorrow off. Whenever you win, you feel good about yourself. As a player, you don't care that the team made four errors, you forget that stuff. They're feeling great going into Radford next weekend. I'll tell you, Cincinnati is not feeling too good right now, and they took two out of three."
The win came in rather dramatic fashion. Duke came to bat in the bottom of the 11th inning with the score tied 8-8. With one out, catcher Troy Caradonna singled. He then advanced to third on a wild pitch. The Bearcats responded by intentionally walking shortstop Kevin Kelly. That brought second baseman Bryan Smith to the plate. Smith ran the count to 2-2, and Kelly stole second with no throw.
The freshman fouled off a pair of pitches before drawing ball three. He knocked pitcher Nate Bouldin's next offering over the shortstop to win the battle and give the Blue Devils the victory.
"I tried to keep my composure as best I could," Smith said. "I just wanted to put the bat on the ball and put the ball in play. He is a great pitcher, he threw well against us yesterday, and he came back in today. He threw a couple of good pitches that I managed to foul off. Then I got the bat on the ball, I knew it was a hit."
For quite a while it looked like the victory, and the end of the game, might never come. Duke took an 8-7 lead in the bottom of the sixth inning, when first baseman Larry Broadway singled home third baseman Aaron Kempster.
The lead held up through the seventh and the eighth as Tim Layden allowed only one hit. In the ninth, the Bearcats strung together three hits with two outs to tie the game at eight runs apiece.
The Blue Devils threatened in the bottom half of the inning. Doug Bechtold advanced to second with one out after a sacrifice bunt from Caradonna, but he would go no further. The game went into extra innings with Layden remaining on the mound for Duke.
"We thought he was throwing well," Hillier said. "I would have sent him out for the 12th, because he was pitching well. He was at 86 pitches [after the ninth]. The cut off for these guys is in the 90 to 100 pitch area and he was still pitching with good velocity. The pitches that they hit were some mistakes he made. But I thought that he still had good velocity and good command. Tim Layden pitched very well tonight"
Hillier's decision proved wise, as Layden kept Cincinnati off the board long enough to allow for Smith's 11th-inning heroics.
The first two games of the series did not go nearly as well for the Blue Devils.
"I thought that Friday and Saturday we didn't play very well at all," Hillier said. "We didn't hit very well, we didn't pitch very well and we didn't play good defense. I think that Cincinnati outplayed us Friday and Saturday."
Friday, Jeff Alleva went four innings, giving up six earned runs as the Bearcats notched 22 hits on the way to a 15-5 victory.
"Jeff is fine," Hillier said. "He's a tremendous competitor. I think it got to him a little because he gave up a lot of cheap hits. Their catcher had five hits, and he only hit the ball hard maybe twice. But you've got to put the ball in play to get cheap hits and they did that. Jeff is fine. Last year he got hit in the head and three weeks later, he is out there pitching. I don't worry about him. I worry more about the young guys. I don't worry about Jeff Alleva rebounding mentally."
In the second game of the weekend, Duke was undone by bad defense and a lack of offensive production.
The Blue Devils gave up three unearned runs in the bottom of the second inning after a walk and a throwing error by Kempster.
Duke responded with a pair of runs in the bottom half of the inning. Mike Miello's sacrifice fly brought home Blake Walker, and Brian Patrick scored on Kempster's double. But the Blue Devils would draw no closer, as Cincinnati scored a pair of runs in the ninth to expand the lead to 5-2. Bouldin held on for the save.
"I think we're a pretty good team," Hillier said. "But we have got to get to the point where we put everything together on a more consistent basis. Nobody does it everyday. But we have got to come out and be more consistent defensively, offensively and with our pitching."
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